Involuntary Illegal Camping

Late afternoon, bit of a blustery day, should be some swell. Nothing great, but there'd be something going on. I'm bored, staring out the window watching the wind through the trees. Phone goes, it's Stuart the Hood.

Stuart: 'Lo. What you up to?
Me: Contemplating the pointlessness of my existence.
Stuart: Wanna go for a surf?
Me: Your mum trusted you with the car? m'kay then..

It's cold, late autumn. We head down the leaf-strewn lanes heading for the beach. We even manage to make it all the way to Bantham without adding to the surf-related collection of bumps and dents on the car. Things were going well. Spirits were high.

The surf wasn't up to much, but we had nothing better to do, being doleys. The wind was a bit onshore, but the size was good. It was doing that thing Bantham does sometimes when the choppy peaks all join up, so if you can work enough speed to make it across the flat spots you can get a pretty good ride. It was fun, and what little crowd there was rapidly thinned out as the sun started to go down. We stayed out until the sun went down and it had started to get dark, and headed in.

Minder, Stuart's crazy dog, bounds over to say hello as we step out of the water and walk back up across the dunes to the car. It's pretty much dark and the wind is picking up, whistling through the dune fencing. The carpark is empty except for our car, but we're not concerned. We get changed, jump in the car and shiver as we wait for the heater to kick in. Then we drive up to the gate.

The carpark at Bantham is privatly owned, and in summer it's closed at about 9 'clock. They put a gate across the lower, main part of the carpark, but you can still park on the side of the road leading down to it. In winter they shut the gate earlier, at about 5.30...we never heard of anyone getting locked in. There was even a big sign saying that overnight parking wasn't allowed, so it hardly makes sense to forbid overnight parking and then lock people in...surely. Right?

The gate is shut and padlocked.

Oh shit, what do we do now?

There's a pub in Bantham, this must happen a lot. They must have a spare key, or at least know the phone number of the guy with the key. We walk up to the pub.

“Hello mate, we've been locked in in the carpark. You havn't got a key have you?”

The barman has a gleam in his eye “No” he says. Shit, he knows something.

“ah, okay, do you know the phone number of the guy with the key?”

“Yes, but he's not there” The little gleam graduates into a little smile...

“Um..right. Where is he then?” Oh, this is going to bad isn't it?

“He's gone to Tenerife.” Big grin.

“Tenerife? Oh great, he's locked our car in and then he's gone and fucked off to Tenerife?” He must be joking right?

“Yeah, but don't worry; his brother has a spare key.” He looks sincere but we can hear the catch coming...

“Oh cool, where is he?”

“London. He'll be back tommorrow morning to unlock.” Laughing at us now..bastard.

“Um, right. Shit. Two pints of guiness then please.”

We sit down with our drinks in the warm and discuss our options.

What the fuck do we do now? We're doleys, we can't afford the Guinness we're drinking let alone get a room in the pub, that would be a weeks money gone.
It's the end of November, we can't sleep in the car, we'll freeze to death. We could call for help to get home, but then we'd have no way to get back to the car tommorrow. We could call the police but they'd just call us stupid twats and laugh. Walk? It's thirty miles and there's a river in the way. So...we have to either open the gate, or find another way out. Sorted.

Guinness-refreshed, and with the confidence of a good idea we head back to the car, still parked in front of the gate. We had a plan, and the plan was a good one. The gate was locked but it was just a normal 5 bar gate, like the ones in farmer's fields. The hinges on those things are only peg-and-hole affairs, we'll just lift the gate off it's hinges, swing it open backwards, drive out, and then put it back together again. No problem. No fuss. No harm done.

It's pitch dark now, real proper countryside darkness where you can't see your hand in front of your face. It was overcast, with no moon. Really properly fuck-off darkness, with a sinister cold wind blowing a few drops of cold rain into our faces. What little light there was was glinting off the drops of water on the car bonnet. The surf was rumbling away just over the dunes. Minder popped up in the window to say hello from the driver's seat and scared the crap out of us.

We turned on the headlights and got to work. The carpark owner was one step ahead of us and had wrapped a heavy anchor chain around the gateposts. A minor setback. We got the gate off the hinges, but the thing was locked on solid by the chain. Hmm, surely this is unlawful imprisonment we thought through our Guiness clouded minds, and so out came the swiss army knife. This saw blade will cut through that hardened 1/4inch anchor chain in a jiffy!

One sliced-open hand later, holding one blunted swiss army knife, we gave up on that idea.

That didn't work. Is there a jack in the car? If we can get the jack inside the chain, maybe we can break it by winding it out? There wasn't quite enough slack to get the jack inside the chain, but a bit of wiggling it about and we wedged it into position. Put the handle in and start winding. Here we go, turning a beaut, until bits of swarf start coming out of the jack's thread. 20 sweaty minutes later, we have a broken car jack and we're still locked in.

Right, well in films they always just ram through these gates by hitting them with the car at 50mph. Seemed like a good idea as any. Stuart, grim faced, got in and put his seatbelt on. I stood back to watch, holding on to Minder's collar, his toungue hanging out in dumbfaced anticipation as his breath condensed in the cold air. The car backed up and stopped. Minder and I stood there, blinded by the headlights as Stuart revved the engine, psyching himself up. The engine revved louder and louder, c'mon, c'mon...and then abruptly cut out. Stuart wound the window down, and leant out.

“Actually” says Stuart, “I don't think that this is such a good idea.”

Well, what if we just use the car to push against the gate instead, and try and break the chain? Maybe we've weakened it..

We drove up and pushed against the gate gently. Nothing. Stuart put his foot down. Nothing. The back wheels started spinning and the gate began to creak but the chain stayed solid. The wood was starting to give, but the chain was wasn't going to. The smell of burning rubber filled the darkness. A louder creak.

“Um, if we smash this gate open, the owner is going to know it's us isn't he?”

“How come?”

“'Cos we're the only idiots who got locked in, so he's probably got our number plate?”

We backed off the gas and gave up, leaving the car leaning hard against the gate.

We went back to pub.

Over another pint and a pasty and chips, served by the smirking barman, we reassessed our situation. There nothing but fields to the side of the carpark, maybe we can find a way out off-road?

We headed back to the carpark and investigated the fields. We wandered out in vaguely the direction of the main road, hoping to find a gate. Instead, we just found a very boggy field with some bemused cows. Staggering 50 yards through the darkness as the mud threatened to steal our shoes convinced us that this was a bad idea, and so, muddy, cold, wet and defeated we went back to the car. The cows watched disintrestedly.

“Do you reckon we could drive over the dunes?”

“Errrrrmm...well, maybe...erm...ah...no. We're gonna have to sleep in the fucking car arn't we?”

First things first; back to the pub. Seeing as we're not driving anywhere we blitz half our giroes on Guinness and cheap doubles.

Suitably tanked up we headed back to the car to work out sleeping arrangements. Two very manky fur-encrusted dog blankets, and a large slightly-insane alsation cross who we hoped would act as a kind of canine radiator. Stuart also had a small ziploc bag of a certain blend of herbs that would help sleep come on.

As Stuart skinned up and we shivered, we noticed the thousands of rabbits all over the car park. We turned the lights on to see bunny upon bunny transfixed by the lights. Hundreds of them, all staring at us. Minder went loopy, bouncing about the car headbutting the windows in his efforts to bust out and chase rabbits. We cracked the door and let him out, knowing that his chances of actualy catching anything were pretty remote, and that he wouldn't calm down until he got a shot at the rabbits. We were right, spoiled for choice the dog couldn't decide which rabbit to go for and ended up trying to chase them all at the same time. Rabbits bounced along under the car making banging noises against the underside as they scattered in all directions and dissappeared within seconds. Minder popped up at the window, rabbit -free; his breath steaming up the windows with his panting and we let him back in.

We put the seats back, tried to not get too close to the fur encrusted blankets keeping us warm and put the heater on.
The combination of Stuart's home-grown and the amount of carbon monoxide the car heater had filled up the car with meant we fell asleep almost immediately.

Next morning, we went for an early morning surf and so missed the car park bloke's brother unlocking the gate. Surf was worse than the day before. We still went in.

PANORAMAS